


time, like memory

by isle3cho



Category: Original Work
Genre: Chronic Illness, Gen, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Male-Female Friendship, Mixed Point of View, Suicidal Ideation, Time Travel, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 10:11:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15749574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isle3cho/pseuds/isle3cho
Summary: Time is precious; you shouldn't waste it. You only get a limited amount of your own, after all.Claire Waters would do anything to slim her own time down - and just her luck, because Adam Chase is running short on his.Is there a better memory to leave imprinted on the earth than that of a hero?





	time, like memory

_I was six years old, when my mother left._

_It wasn't like when other mothers leave. She didn't die, she didn't abandon us...it was just her time, and she was_ gone _._

_I guess you could say it was her curse._

_My father stayed with me a while longer. But he missed my mother, and within the year, he was gone, too._

_I was the one who found him, hanging._

_After that, I was given over to the system. For the past ten years, I have been in and out of foster homes, the only real constancy in my life being the psychologist I had been forced to see at St. Hope's hospital._

_I was alone. Always alone. They tried to fix me, but there was nothing to_ fix _. You can't fix a broken thing if the broken thing is no longer_ there.

_But I played my part in this script they had written, smiled when I was supposed to and said the right things._

_I had come up with a plan, and under the mask I wore for the sake of society, I was determined to carry it through._

_Both my parents were gone. My father - he was out of my reach, barring one fatal step I wasn't willing to take. My mother, however...that was doable._

_I just had to make her curse my curse, too._

[X]

_It was a Wednesday, the first time I met her._

_Not the first time I saw her - over the years of hospital visits, pills and experimental procedures, I had seen her walk through the halls many times. She was just another part of life in St. Hope's Memorial Hospital, and I'd never really given her much thought._

_But, on that day, that particular Wednesday, a hot day in the middle of summer, when I was lying down miserably in my hospital bed and feeling weaker than I had in a long while, she deviated from her normal route, the one that took her straight past my room and to the front entrance of the hospital, and leant against the doorframe._

_I blinked._

_"Adam, right?" She asked in the tone of someone who already knows the answer. She stared at me, with pale eyes that were a cold grey somewhere between green and blue, and tilted her head slightly to the side. Her long hair, which she had tied back, swung with the movement._

_I blinked again, before nodding. She took that as her cue to enter the room._

_I knew who she was, of course - Claire Waters, another kid like me who had spent more than their fair share of time growing up within St. Hope's walls. Unlike me, though, she was beautiful. She was_ healthy. _Her hair was thick and wavy, and something about the way it framed her face just made her look...well, warm. Warm and_ alive _in a way I_ wasn't _. Her existence was a stark contrast to my own - I was gaunt and pale, illness beating out even the best care the hospital could give to me._

_I supposed I might've grown up to be handsome, once - but that was before this sickness, before I became little more than a living definition of emaciated._

_Claire stared by the table positioned near my bedside, or rather, at the books piled on it. "You like history," she said._

_Still confused as to why Claire Waters was in my hospital room, but pleased for the company to distract me from the heat and the discomfort it was causing, I answered. "Yeah. I do."_

_Conversation, especially with actual people IRL; not my forte._

_She nodded, almost distractedly. "They haven't figured out what's wrong with you yet, have they?"_

_I tensed. That was true. Three years ago, after a car accident, I had fallen dangerously ill, and though I'd gotten 'better' in a manner of speaking, I had never truly recovered. No doctor, no specialist, had ever managed to figure out why I was sick. They could only give a diagnosis - with no clear cure, or idea of what the problem was, I would more than likely die from my...'disease.' The only reason I hadn't been quarantined or locked up as a little more than an interesting subject of study was the fact that whatever it was, it wasn't contagious._

_It was true, and Claire shouldn't know about it._

_"What if I told you I knew what was wrong with you?" She said. "And if I knew how to fix it?"_

[~X~]

Claire held in a breath as Adam's gaze flickered over her, as if gaging just how serious she was - whether or not this was a poor joke made in bad taste, a cruel trick by a sadistic girl, or the mad ramblings of someone as crazy as her constant trips to a psychologist would make her seem.

"I'd think you were lying," he said finally, his green eyes dark and hard as stone. "That, or crazy."

She breathed out. "And if I was neither?"

Adam seemed startled by her persistence to continue this conversation train, but indulged her anyway, smiling bitterly and ducking his head down so that his blond hair hid his eyes. "Then obviously you'd be an angel," he said, voice quiet. "A miracle." His gaze once again rose up to meet hers. "Or maybe a demon. What's the price? My soul?"

Claire smiled weakly. Adam was obviously not taking her seriously - and for what was honestly good reason, most people wouldn't buy what Claire was selling, not without proof - and as things were now, Claire just _could not_ offer him that proof. She didn't know him well enough yet, couldn't trust that he wouldn't talk to someone, tell authorities about her.

Adam Chase could very well be her salvation - the key to the end she had worked towards since her father had left her.

He could also be her undoing, if she trusted too easily or rushed into it, giving too much, too soon.

So, "Sorry, Adam." A smile. "That wasn't very nice of me."

He shook his head, waving his arms as if to say, 'it's fine,' before reclining back from his upright seated position into the pillows that were piled up behind him, his features taking on an exhausted tone, the light in his eyes dimming slightly.

Claire frowned, and inspected his face closely. It was tinged grey, and a sensation like worry mixed with anger sparked to life within her.

Adam noticed, and seemed to take her frown for his actions. "Sorry," he apologised. "It's just exhausting to keep myself up sometimes."

She shook her head. "You're fine," she reassured, before leaning forward and placing a hand on his arm. "I don't mind," she smiled, and he jolted slightly beneath her grip.

A quick glance revealed no-one was watching from the hall, and a quick sideways step made it so that her body blocked anything that could be seen, anyway. Adam would be more difficult, but his wide eyes were locked firmly onto her face as a red blush spread across his cheeks, and when it came down to it, she was planning to tell him eventually, anyway.

As always, she felt the worst of the effects before it even began, a tight, tugging burning; shrinking veins stabbed through with invisible fish-hooks, her body being torn apart by flames even as ice froze the pieces back together. Her mouth and eyes dried up almost immediately, and her skin blanched to pale white.

Along the length of her arm - up the wrist and hand she had placed on Adam - branching lines, similar to veins or delicate tree roots, formed. Bulging, some large, some small, and the dark sepia of ink or coffee, they spiraled from her heart down to the place she and Adam were connected by touch.

Along his arm, reaching up to his face, grey skin went from eerie to a mere 'unhealthily pale.'

Holding back a gasp of pain as the recoil hit her, harder than it ever had before, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, Claire stumbled back, lifting her hand off of Adam's arm.

"You - what did you -" Adam's words were broken pieces of a sentence not yet fully formed, and he paused to take a deep breath before continuing, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Claire said, voice raspy. "What about you?"

"I feel..." he considered, looking down at his hands - specifically, at the place, just above his left wrist, that Claire had gripped a hold on. "Better. More so than I have in a while."

Claire let out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding, relieved. She'd had no honest idea of whether or not that would work, knowing in theory that it could be done and _had_ been done before, but never having done so herself. "That's good," she said, genuinely happy - both for her, and for Adam.

This success meant that _it would work_.

"It won't last, though," she warned him, her eyes sad. "For your type, it never does."

"My type?" Adam questioned weakly. His face, while still pale had pinched colour filling the cheeks, and a hazy gleam had coated his eyes - shock? Euphoria? Had she somehow triggered something similar to an anesthetic?

"Er," Claire hesitated, wobbling on her feet, head still pounding and judgement admittedly clouded. "I don't think today is the best time," she finally came up with, phrasing it as diplomatically as she possibly could.

Thankfully, Adam seemed to understand - either that or he was a) remarkably willing to just roll with it, b) in shock and/or denial, or c) all of the above.

Personally, Claire held with 'c' - but whichever it was, it made her job easier. She closed her eyes for a few moments as she collected herself, just until strobe lights stopped flashing across her mind.

It was as she turned towards the door, ready to leave, that Adam spoke again. "You'll explain this, right?" He asked, tone pleading. "So when I wake up tomorrow I know I'm not crazy?"

Claire stilled at the threshold. "Of course," she said softly.

After all, she knew what it was like to think yourself mad.

[X]

Over the course of several weeks, Claire kept coming to visit Adam in his room and he continued to allow it, putting up with all the _looks_ and giggles from the nurses and doctors that did his routine check-ups with only a minimum amount of grumbling.

_It's not like that,_ he would insist. _We're just...just..._ And of course, here, he would falter, not sure if he could really claim friendship between himself and Claire. However, this hesitance only cemented in the minds of the St Hope hospital staff that they were a 'thing,' or were on the track to becoming one, and they decided near unanimously to encourage their 'budding romance' as much as they humanly could.

Claire had been as bemused by this as Adam was mortified.

_It's cute,_ she had said, smiling slightly from her seated position beside his bed, hair pulled back into a high ponytail that showed of the sharp lines of her face - almost too sharp, like she hadn't been eating well. As Adam frowned at this, she'd continued, _isn't it nice to know they care?_

He'd had to hold back a blush at her words. _Yeah, I guess,_ he'd answered quietly. _I mean, we have known them for years_. It was as Claire was nodding her agreement that he snapped at her _but my little sister is bothering me about my non-existent girlfriend now!_

Claire had blinked, looking startled.

_Eh?_ She had questioned, still blinking, her mouth falling open slightly, jaw slack. _Sister?_

_Ah - yeah. Elle._ He'd said, confused at the depth of her shock, but not really questioning it. They didn't know each other all that well yet - maybe she was just always that dramatic. _She's twelve._

Claire had fallen silent at that, looking down at her lap, her hands clenching and unclenching in it in what Adam had quickly had come to understand was her incredibly obvious tell. What, exactly, it was telling - well, he couldn't figure out everything right off the bat. And then, as Claire was wont to do, she soon fled the scene, as if attempting to leave behind the awkwardness she herself had injected into the situation.

The next day she had come back, cordial and cheerful and full of a snarky humor that she had shown no sign of in their first encounter, clearly determined to pretend the Elle conversation had never happened. Adam had indulged her, not willing to dig into whatever it was that had upset her the day earlier - Claire had, after all, been coming to St. Hope's for years as a visiting patient in the psychology focused area of the hospital. If something about - little sisters? Twelve year old girls? The name Elle? - disturbed her, he wasn't going to deliberately make it worse for her.

In fact, it was with this in mind that he hadn't yet really pushed the question of what, exactly, she had done to him on their first meeting any further. He'd felt better since then, the constant pain lessening to a dull ache, as easy to ignore as it had once been, back in the beginning stages of his illness, all those years ago - but it hadn't been a prescription or procedure that had done that to him, but rather a small teenage girl, almost a full year younger than his own seventeen years of age. She'd made him feel better than he had in literal _years_ simply by _laying her hand on his arm_.

He’d been trying not to think too hard on that – or on what she’d offered to him during her one real ‘explanation,’ when her answers had been just enough to answer some questions while leaving him with about a million more and a lifetime’s worth of doubt.

That second morning, the one that came after the afternoon of their first meeting - she had come to his room early, as soon as visiting hours would allow. Adam, for his part, had been awake and waiting impatiently since about quarter past five that morning, half convinced that she had been a hallucination, brought on by the painkillers, or the summer heat, or a bizarre mixture of both.

Almost as soon as she had entered his threshold proper and Adam had recovered from that exhilarating thought of _she's real, it happened_ that ran through his body like an electric shock from a live wire, questions were pouring out of his mouth, a mess of _hows_ and _whats_ and _whys_.

Claire had stood, pale and blinking, in his doorway for a good two minutes that first morning, looking slightly overwhelmed by the onslaught of questions and as if she severely regretted her decision to actually get out of bed.

_Um_ , she had spoken. _I don't_ -

\- _I'm sorry,_ Adam had cut her off. _That was rude of me_. Looking around slightly frantically for something to inspire a starting point to conversation, he'd then blurted out, _chair._

_Chair?_ Claire had queried, smiling faintly, which gave him hope that all was not yet lost.

_Yeah._ A sheepish grin. _Er, take a seat._

Shaking her head at him and laughing quietly, she had pulled a chair into position beside his bed and sat down. _Good morning, Adam,_ she'd said.

He'd nodded, and for a few minutes after exchanging pleasantries they engaged in all kinds of small talk - Adam attempting to put Claire at ease, and Claire very clearly trying to avoid the topic all together. Eventually, thought, bland conversation topics ran out and the room fell silent, a serious air invading.

_Claire,_ Adam had spoken softly. _Yesterday - what you did...what_ was _it, exactly?_

Claire had sighed, shifting almost uncomfortably in her seat. _It's difficult to explain,_ she'd said. _And probably just as difficult to understand._ Here she'd paused, mouth opening and closing as she was seemingly at a loss. _I suppose the best way to put it would be that I gave you some of my time._

He'd blinked. _Your...time?_

_Adam,_ she had said seriously. _What do you think time is?_

He'd stared at her for a second. _What?_

_Define time for me._

Claire's gaze had been entirely serious, and focused on him as she asked him a question he would expect from a teacher - either of an elementary school or philosophy, he wasn't sure. _It's, well, it's time._ He'd said. _It's history. It’s the world and everything in it aging. It's that clock on the wall,_ he'd continued, _the measurements themselves might be human made, but time itself just_ is.

Claire had nodded. _Time, Adam,_ she'd said, _is the earth._ Reaching over to the draws by his bedside, she'd rummaged through them until she'd found what she was looking for - a pen and a piece of paper.

On this piece of paper, she drew several lines, branching from one another and connecting until she had in front of her an image resembling the roots, trunk, and bare branches of a tree. _Have you seen this before?_ She'd asked him, sending a quick glance up. _The 'Tree of Life.'_

Adam considered the picture before him. _I've seen something like it,_ he'd said. _Like, a Celtic knot type thing._

Claire had nodded distractedly, still scribbling on her paper. _It's more of a concept than anything,_ she'd said. _You'll see evidence of the 'Tree of Life' in most cultures, particularly the religions. Yggdrasil is an example, and there are passages revolving around a tree of life in the Bible. You can see it in pop-culture, too - movies, games, anime - they quite frequently feature a 'Tree of Life' motif._ She'd paused in her scribbling, turning her hands so they were palm up, before staring down at them. _We call it the Lifa tree._

_Lifa?_

_It's Old Norse. It means 'to live,'_ She'd smiled bitterly up at him. _Also, 'to endure,' 'to survive.'_ She'd paused, taken a breath. _'To burn.' It's fitting, really._

_Fitting? I...I'm not sure I understand, Claire_.

_People rarely do. It sounds crazy, I must admit._ She locked her eyes onto his, gaze dead serious. _Time is memory,_ she said. _The world’s memory, branching through eternity. And people like me…we remember it, too._

For a moment, Adam had simply stared at her, and she’d nodded to his arm – the arm she’d placed her hand on, the arm she’d healed him from. _When you know how something works, you can use it. Manipulate it,_ she’d said. _And I_ know _time._

Feeling weak, not physically, but mentally overwhelmed – Adam shook his head, a silent plea for her to explain further.

_What would you do,_ she said, _if I told you I could turn yours back?_

**Author's Note:**

> This is an original novel project I've been working on since...oh, geez February 2015, looking at the document date. I haven't touched it much since I started it, to be honest, and editing through this first part today was an exercise in remembering just how I used to write. My style is quite different now, I think, and I'm hoping as I rework and rewrite what I've got here that the dissonance doesn't translate quite as clearly as I can see it.
> 
> I don't have many notes on just how I was planning for this all to go beyond what vague mental ones I can drag up so I'm going into this pretty blindly - I just hope that whatever I end up creating lives up to the imagination and plots of the younger me who came up with this.


End file.
